Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi Review

Faithful to a fault.

There's a reason Dragon Ball Z hasn't seen a truly faithful video game adaptation. Even now, 15 years after the anime series ended in Japan, game developers have struggled to find the mechanics and technology necessary to adapt Akira Toriyama's iconic and classic series. Wait no more, DBZ fans. With the arrival of Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi, it's finally possible to say that someone has attained that lofty goal, despite a considerable number of gameplay issues.

Developer Spike has succeeded in creating a graphics engine that recreates the cartoon in interactive form. In some ways the game looks better than its anime source material, pulling Toriyama's manga art style into three dimensions in a way that's never seen realization before. More importantly, the fluidity of the battle sequences, ranging from lightning-fast physical combat to the planet-scale energy blasts, has never looked this genuine. Ultimate Tenkaichi makes all other Dragon Ball Z games look utterly lethargic.

The game's backgrounds and environments contribute to the overall stunning visual realization of the franchise. Wanting to impress the epic scale of these battles upon gamers, Spike has created a system that allows for the destruction of the world around combatants. Energy blasts will create canyons and craters throughout the landscape, reinforcing the sense of power present in the Dragon Ball Z franchise. On a slightly down note, much of the locale damage reverts back to normal after the scripted attack sequence ends. Something with more permanence seems necessary in the future.

So Ultimate Tenkaichi is gorgeous. You'll glean that much from screenshots and trailers, and to some degree we've seen other DBZ games manage fairly strong visuals. It's not much of a surprise that the latest and greatest title in the franchise yields the best results. However the gameplay this time around truly shocked me. On-screen interfaces and commands aside, it almost appears as if the cartoon is being remade on the screen. In-game fights certainly play out at a faster pace than their anime counterparts, and you don't have to deal with any "To Be Continued…" screens.

Combat incorporates all of the moves you know and love from the Dragon Ball Z franchise. The game cleverly chains ranged and proximity actions together through combos, which you'll execute through timed command prompts. In no time at all both players can quickly pull off dazzling attacks so long as they carefully manage a couple on-screen meters. Similarly, counter attacks feel equally easy to pull off, giving players reasonable opportunities to reverse momentum. To say Spike's fighting mechanics capture the spirit and speed of DBZ is a massive understatement. It helps that this type of combat is rare within the fighting genre. You won't see Street Fighter doing anything like this.

Unfortunately Spike has yet to find flexibility within its mechanics. Whether you're playing as Goku or Kid Buu, by and large these characters function the same. Sure, your Chocolate Beam attack is going to look different than your Kamehameha, and it'll do different damage, but you pull off the same moves to get to that point.

The vast majority of fights operate within the same parameters, requiring you to charge your Ki and Spirit meters to certain levels for particular defensive and offensive maneuvers. Core strategy revolves around choosing outwitting your opponent on reversals, which boils down to a 50/50 chance. The first half dozen matches all feel fresh and bold until you realize you're the same thing you did 30 minutes ago with a completely different character. When that sinks in, Ultimate Tenkaichi loses a fair amount of its allure.

Yet despite that repetitive, narrow nature, Ultimate Tenkaichi offers a great deal of content. The core experience managed to keep me hooked with its massive, massive story modes (one for each of the franchise's established sagas, one for created characters), which easily last over a dozen hours. Tournaments and standard exhibition matches round out your combat options. [Editor's Note: As of press time, we haven't been able to test Ultimate Tenkaichi's online modes. We will, and if we discover any significant issues, we'll report back.]

Where Tenkaichi stumbles isn't so much in the breadth of its content but in the detail and presentation. By far the biggest offender here is the game's loading times. Despite the fact that there are plenty of opportunities to stream data while cutscenes or statistics are being displayed, the developers insisted on doing everything in dull loading screens. Amazingly, you'll see one lengthy loading screen transition to an equally lengthy one, interrupted only by a brief, unnecessary dialogue exchange or glimpse of the game's overworld. It is not impossible to see nearly a half dozen loading screens between some key matches.

Tenkaichi struggles with how to present DBZ's admittedly sprawling, unwieldy saga. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the game serves the material best with sequences directly from the anime, though these come few and far between. Somewhat less effective are exchanges between characters using in-game graphics, though the ability of the engine to portray more nuanced moments is somewhat questionable. More often than not, Spike chose to use screens of scrolling text - lengthy, painfully slow screens - to describe the vast majority of the storyline. I doubt I need to emphasize how anticlimactic having such a visually-oriented series (and game!) reduced to impenetrable walls of words feels.

Long demanded and anticipated by fans, Ultimate Tenkaichi features the ability to create your own Saiyan warrior. Knowing well the enormous challenge it must have presented to even begin to contemplate a mode like this, the fact that it exists in this game is remarkable. For decades DBZ fans have wanted to see new creations in the mold of Akira Toriyama's art style. Now that can happen. It's not too much of a shock to see the tools available come off a bit limited - your character will look remarkably like existing characters, albeit with bolder color options - but it's a great inclusion nonetheless. Your Saiyan will start out as a weakling, however, so prepare to level up like mad.

The Verdict

Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi is beautifully flawed. It has gameplay that actually captures the unique complexity, spirit and speed of the franchise, which is no small feat. Like I said before, it manages to make the anime look dated, and that's something few Dragon Ball games have done. Yet such an achievement does not come without faults. Characters operate too similarly, and there are a whole host of annoyances that pile up, the most offensive of which are the ubiquitous and unyielding loading screens. If I never see another DynoCap, it will be too soon.